The old saying goes “The best things in life are free” with regards to things like love, joy, peace, and happiness; things that we all seek but that money cannot buy. While it is true that these qualities have no monetary value and we cannot use our financial resources to obtain them, life has taught me that they do indeed come at a cost. There is a price to pay for these “free” things we all seek and, I believe, if we learn to understand what it costs to have them we are more likely to actually obtain them.

As with everything, the cost to obtain these “freedoms” starts in the mind. It starts with a decision that we want the thing and that we will pursue it by any means necessary. It requires that we be vigilant in our quest to obtain something without knowing how long it will take to obtain it. When we are buying something we know how much it costs and can calculate accurately how much work we must do to purchase it. But, in a quest to find peace, for instance, we really don’t know how long it will take for it to appear.

The cost of things that are “free” is far greater than money. The cost includes efforts that cannot be recovered such as time, energy, and our emotions. And the most amazing, and frustrating, thing to understand about these “freedoms” that we seek is that it is only after they have been taken away that we realize we have (or had) them. Think about it. We never realize we have peace until there is chaos. We never realize we have love until it is gone. We often don’t enjoy our happiness until we are sad. And joy is only appreciated in times of pain. Yes, my friends, these things do come at a price.

The cost of these “free” things is relentless determination to hold on to them. Fixing our thoughts, our actions, and our intentions to the idea that, regardless of our circumstances and what is presently occurring in our lives, we WILL have love, or joy, or peace, or happiness, or whatever it is that we need. The cost is pressing through life when you feel like giving up. It is acting as if everything is okay when, to the natural eye, it is not. It is overlooking the failures in pursuit of victory, pushing away negativity and focusing on the positive, approaching each day as if this is the day that everything you’ve be hoping and waiting for will come to fruition. That’s the cost, ladies and gentlemen, of the BEST things in life…